Margaret - Two in the Far North

TWO IN THE FAR NORTH

To Mother, who took me there, and to Olaus, who came.

Text 1957, 1962, 1978, 1990, and 1997 by Margaret E. Murie. Illustrations
1957, 1962, and 1997 by Olaus J. Murie; 1978 and 1997 by Margaret E. Murie.

Foreword 1994 and 1997 by Terry Tempest Williams.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without written permission of Alaska Northwest Books.

Two in the Far North was first published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and
in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, 1962. Fourth printing, 1970. Ballantine

Books, Inc., Comstock Edition, 1972. Published with additional text and illustrations by Alaska
Northwest Books Publishing Company, 1978. Published with a new conclusion, Alaska Northwest
Books, 1990. Published with a new foreword by Terry Tempest Williams, 1997.

Portions of Chapters 1 and 2 of Part IV appeared originally under the title A Week at Lobo Lake
in Animal Kingdom. Portions of Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5 of Part IV appeared originally under the
title A Live River in the Arctic, in The Living Wilderness. Some of the illustrations first appeared
with A Live River in the Arctic and in Audubon Magazine.

Publisher gratefully acknowledges Pantheon Books and Terry Tempest Williams for their permission to
reprint Mardy Murie: An Intimate Profile, in a slightly expanded form from its publication in
An Unspoken Hunger (Pantheon, 1994).

First edition 1962

Illustration, front cover, and title page: Edwin Boyd Johnson, Mount Kimball, Alaska (1938), oil on
canvas, 76.7 x 102cm. Collection of Anchorage Museum of History and Art. Photograph by
Chris Arend. Photograph, back cover: Margaret Murie, Garth Dowling.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Murie, Margaret E.

Two in the Far North / Margaret E. Murie, author; Olaus J. Murie, illustrator ; with a new foreword by Terry Tempest Williams.35th anniversary ed., 5th ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-88240-955-9 (hardbound)

ISBN 978-0-88240-489-9 (alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-88240-863-7 (e-book)

1. AlaskaDescription and travel. 2. Murie, Margaret E. 3. PioneersAlaskaBiography. 4. AlaskaBiography. 5. Frontier and pioneer lifeAlaska. 6. Natural historyAlaska. I. Title.

F909.M94A3 1997

979.8'04'092dc21

97-12760

CIP

Designer: Carol Haralson

Formatter: Fay Bartels

Alaska Northwest Books

An imprint of Graphic Arts Books

P.O. Box 56118

Portland, OR 97238-6118

(503) 254-5591

www.graphicartsbooks.com

When I think about that return to the part of Alaska which has meant so much in my life, the overpowering and magnificent fact is that Lobo Lake is still there, untouched. Last Lake is still there, untouched. Although the instant you fly west of the Canning River man is evident in all the most blatant debris of his machine power, east of the Canning the tundra, the mountains, the unmarked space, the quiet, the land itself, are all still there.

Do I dare to believe that one of my great-grandchildren may someday journey to the Sheenjek and still find the gray wolf trotting across the ice of Lobo Lake?

MARGARET MURIE, 1978

from Afterward

Two in the Far North

What, after all, are the most precious things in a life?

We had a honeymoon in an age when the world was sweet and untrammeled and safe. Up there in the Koyukuk there were very few machines of any kind; but there was joy in companionship and in the simple thingslike the crackle of a fire, having tea and bread while the rain pattered on the roof, a chance meeting with a friend on the dog-team trail.

What made us happy to go back to Fairbanks? Was it the new buildings, strangely tall, the blocks of beautiful modern landscaped homes, the busy traffic, the neon signs? All this we saw with our eyes, but it did not touch us. What did touch us deeply was the thought that Ted and Audrey, Otto and Ivar, and Jim and Katherine might be there at the gate as we walked, wondering, from the plane; that the next day when we walked the old familiar streets in the middle of town we might meet Bobbie Sheldon or Freddie Johnston by the post office steps; that down the street we might meet Eddy Davis, that we would see Al Polet in the bank, Les Almquist in the N.C. store, Dave and Benjie Adler in their bookshop; and that when we walked into the lobby of the Nordale, Eva McGown would meet us with outstretched arms.

Here in Alaska people still count, as much today as in the twenties. I would love to think the world will survive its obsession with machines to see a day when people respect one another all over the world. It seems as clear as a shaft of the Aurora that this is our only hope. My prayer is that Alaska will not lose the heart-nourishing friendliness of her youththat her people will always care for one another, her towns remain friendly and not completely ruled by the dollarand that her great wild places will remain great, and wild, and free, where wolf and caribou, wolverine and grizzly bear, and all the arctic blossoms may live on in the delicate balance which supported them long before impetuous man appeared in the North.

This is the great gift Alaska can give to the harassed world.

To my husband, Olaus J. Murie, and to our three children, Martin, Joanne, and Donald, who all joined Angus Cameron, my editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in urging and encouraging the writing of this book, my earnest thanks.

But also to Mother, again to Joanne, and to my friend Mildred Capron, who helped give me time for it, and to Margaret Demorest, who in a few words quickened a desire to try to write our story. To Harriett Willard who typed the manuscript with interest and zealous care; to the editors of The Living Wilderness and Animal Kingdom for permission to draw upon material previously published as articles in those magazines; and finally to the other members of our 1956 and 1961 Brooks Range expeditions, to Otto William Geist, and to Fairfield Osborn and the other officers of the New York Zoological Society, who made the whole of Part IV of this book possible.

On June 5, 1977, in Denver, Colorado, hundreds of individuals from the American West gathered to testify on behalf of the Alaskan Lands Bill sponsored by Representative Morris Udall. It was one of the many regional hearings conducted by the House Interior Subcommittee on General Oversight and Alaskan Lands.